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CHAPTER 16: ADVANCED CONFIGURATION
16.15 BULK PROVISIONING
Black Box appliances include wizard scripts to facilitate configuration and deployment en masse. These wizards operate at the
command line level, so knowledge of the Linux command line and shell scripting is useful, but not necessary—they aim to be user-
friendly enough for remote hands to manage. This bulk provisioning feature is supported by firmware version 3.9.1 or later, and
VCMS version 4.4.0 and later (optional).
Both the bulk provisioning of Black Box appliances and bulk enrollment of these appliances into Virtual Central Management
System (VCMS) is supported. These features may be used separately or in conjunction.
Using this method, an Black Box appliance can be fully configured and enrolled into VCMS with minimal interaction, in under 5
minutes. The basic steps are:
Configure an individual golden master appliance with the baseline configuration shared by all Black Box appliances. This may be a
minimal configuration if the installs are quite diverse, or a complete configuration when dealing with replicated installs.
Use make-template to turn the golden master’s active configuration into a template configuration that may be applied to other
appliances.
Create an OPG backup of the templated golden master appliance.
Restore this configuration to each target devices via the CLI, web UI or using a USB thumb drive.
Login via the CLI to complete configuration using setup-wizard.
(Optional) On VCMS, use enrollment-wizard to automatically place appliances under management. This may be local/routable
appliances, or remote appliances that have automatically Call Home using callhome-wizard.
Steps 5 and 6 may be reversed for remote setup via Lighthouse.
16.16 ZERO TOUCH PROVISIONING
Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) was introduced with firmware release 3.15.1 to allow Black Box appliances to be provisioned during
their initial boot from a DHCP server.
16.16.1 PREPARATION
These are typical steps for configuration over a trusted network:
Configure a same-model Black Box device.
Optionally use the Bulk Provisioning wizard scripts to remove any appliance-specific settings (that is, create a template
configuration) and/or prepare the configuration for automated VCMS enrollment. See Section 16.15.
Save the configuration as an Black Box backup (.opg) file under System > Configuration Backup in the web UI, or via config -e in the
CLI.
Alternatively, you can save the XML configuration as a file ending in .xml.
Publish the .opg or .xml file on a fileserver that understands one of the HTTPS, HTTP, FTP or TFTP protocols.
Configure your DHCP server to include a vendor specific option for Black Box devices. The option text should be a URL to the
location of the .opg or .xml file. The option text should not exceed 250 characters in length. It must end in either .opg or .xml.
Connect a new Black Box device (either at defaults from the factory, or config erased) to the network and apply power.
NOTE: It may take up to 5 minutes for the device to find the .opg or .xml file via DHCP, download, install the file and reboot itself.